Penumbra Darkening
by mayonaka-ni-sakayume
Summary: Penumbra n: A partial shadow, as in an eclipse, between regions of complete shadow and complete illumination. How much can a light be dimmed before it puts itself out entirely?
1. Prologue

Penumbra Darkening

Cautions: none, yet

Inescapable disclaimer: I own nothing.

Prologue

It was the cold that kept him awake. Snow tumbled relentlessly over the eerie gray-orange of the January sky, glowing where it passed before the streetlamps only to fade to a damp blur beyond them, cascading to coat the road and freeze the branches of every tree into perfect, harsh white. The thermometer affixed near the front door proclaimed a temperature well below the freezing point, one the house's heating system did little to combat.

And yet that chill was a tolerable one. It was all too easy to bind oneself in warm clothes and blankets, as Ryou had done tonight, weaving a veritable cocoon of fleece and down upon his bed to insulate his slight frame against the air. The season did not drive his sleeplessness, tonight or on any other night. But what kept him conscious, sitting curled into himself and gazing out the window as his bedside clock cast a glimmer of the silent hour upon the nightstand, was indeed the cold. It was the cold within.

Within himself, and doubly so within the room, where a glance towards his desk would pick out the silhouette, like some nightmarish dreamcatcher, of the cord-strung ring hanging from the high back of the chair pushed neatly into place there. Reminding him, silently and constantly, that he was not alone here. Inside it, or inside the recesses of his own mind – he could no longer see the line that had once parted the two – its resident spirit was no more restful than Ryou, and his thoughts were characteristically dark. He talked to himself, no doubt an inevitable habit to develop after so many centuries of confined solitude, and through the breathless silence of the room Ryou could pick out bits of the monologue. _The pharaoh's light_, pondered the cold murmur, _is surely his greatest weakness. To destroy him_ – Ryou flinched. It was hardly the first time the spirit's thoughts had taken that turn, but to hear the threats and plots against the one he considered his only true friend became no less painful with time. Tonight, as he had countless times before, he endured the sting in silence, numbly watching the world beyond his window reduce itself to gray and white.

It was only when his mind began to resound with the being's dark laughter, cruel and clever and echoing, that he drew his legs tighter against his chest and buried his head against his knees with a quiet mental plea.

_Stop it_.

Silence, the laugh dying down. A moment without words, incredulous…

…and then it began again, cold and mocking. Challenging. Daring Ryou to back those words with a strength - one they were both fully aware was not in his possession.

_Stop it_, he murmured again, chest tightening. _Please._

And then the spirit was before him, in all his terrifying reality. A solid form upon the bed – for he had mastered this little trick now, of wielding his container's unearthly powers to lend himself an independent shape, for a short while at a time. A pale hand reached for one of Ryou's, nails grabbing into his wrist, and the boy's blank terror was met with a glare that made the frosted window seem warm by comparison.

"Do not," came the hissed command, "attempt to tell me what to do."

The heavy winter clothes Ryou wore the next day did little to warm him, but they hid nearly all of the bruises.

(A/N: Short prologue. Call it a teaser. Let me know what you think.)


	2. Chapter 1

Penumbra Darkening

Cautions: Angst. Lots.

Inescapable disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 1

The thing about the night was that it didn't care who slept through it and who did not. One way or another, it would eventually end. And so it had this morning, sun taking no heed of any unfortunate insomniacs as it struggled half-heartedly to pierce the damp gray dawn. Unfailingly, the clock flickered and beeped, declaring that it was time to regain consciousness; it too neither knew nor cared that the pale battered boy lying silently in bed had not enjoyed one moment of rest that night. The assault had ended eventually, and the spirit retreated in grim satisfaction, leaving Ryou to tremble where he lay amidst the rumpled blankets. On this night, he had not even bothered to tend to his wounds afterwards, nor to rewrap himself in the bedding for warmth and comfort. He had merely remained as he was, shivering from time to time and staring blankly up at the ceiling.

All of this would not put off the approach of morning and routine, and the insistent mechanical chirps continued until a delicate hand found the alarm button and put a stop to it. The motion was trancelike, as were all those that would follow that morning. Teeth were brushed, hair was combed, a school uniform buttoned into place – all of it as mechanically and unfeelingly as would be expected of one in a trance. If he was supposed to be awake now, he certainly looked the part, but to truly be conscious was a luxury Ryou could not afford in these moments. Rarely now could he summon up the strength to knowingly protect himself, and so his subconscious stepped in to help, guiding him through this strange shadowy version of reality in which he neither felt nor thought. Surely, to feel – to think – as he was dabbing a washcloth carefully at a bruise that stained his cheekbone – would undo him.

The spirit, of course, was awake as well. This was his routine too, one which began where Ryou's ended – with the looping of the Ring-laden cord about the boy's neck. That had always been a voluntary action, even in those times when a true struggle had existed between them, when Ryou had believed he wanted the spirit to disappear. None of that had mattered. Even as he proclaimed his hatred for the servitude and the torment, he dutifully kept the ring in its place, never letting it stray from his sight. Now, once again, it laid against his chest as he turned to lock the door behind him, hidden away under shirt and jacket and chill-deflecting overcoat. Its tenant lounged silently at the edges of his host's mind, watching the snow-globe town from behind listless, fatigue-rimmed brown eyes.

The first signs of actual life did not appear until they were needed, as the slush-laden walk towards school brought his path to intersect with that of Yugi and his small band of friends, all of them just as wrapped and bundled against the cold as Ryou. There came the expected smiles, the waved greetings – Yugi's, as usual, most enthusiastic of all – and in response the equally expected politeness with which he always presented himself, aching or not. Absentmindedly, he found a silver lining to the previous night; his legs, by sheer luck, had not fallen under the abuse, and so this time there was no telltale limp to invent an excuse for. It was just as well. By now they were learning not to bother asking. Some weeks ago, when Ryou's explanation for a nasty scrape near his eye had failed to convince Yugi, the puzzled boy had turned to his own yami for confirmation of his theory on it, and the discussion that followed had ended up costing him a little sleep as well.

_"That cut Bakura-kun had…it was…from –him-, wasn't it?"_

_A sigh. "Most likely, Yugi."_

_"…Then…a few days ago, when he said he'd hurt his hand making dinner…that…?"_

_"It's possible."_

_"Why does he take that?" Frustration. Concern. An innocence that had made the pharaoh's heart ache._

_"Those things can be very complicated, aibou."_

By now even Jounouchi had learned to hold his tongue, maintaining the distant knowing silence the others had come to embrace on the days Ryou came to school in ill condition, and once the first awkward silence had passed the walk continued in uneventfully pleasant fashion. Conversations drifted by Ryou's ears, and his surroundings passed without impact. He could almost see himself there, and all of it an old soundless movie playing out before his eyes – Jounouchi groaning about homework he hadn't bothered with, Yugi playfully scolding him for it and receiving a headlock and friendly bit of tousling from the taller boy in return, Anzu expressing her thoughts on the matter with a sigh and a roll of her eyes…

And then _he_ spoke. The voice, icy and thoughtful, that hummed in Ryou's thoughts as the group waited for the light to let them cross a busy road.

_If I were to push one of them now…If I were to knock the pharaoh's light into the street, do you suppose he would die right away? Or would he suffer first?_ Ryou's legs buckled at that, gloved hands clenching in his pockets as if to ensure they wouldn't move to perform such an act. Relishing the reaction he'd earned, the spirit spoke again, and Ryou could all but see the sadist's grin through which the words were murmured. _Of course, it would be –you- who pushed him. They already think you're insane…ha!_ Wild amusement, in light of the expressionless face from which all color had rapidly drained. _They'd lock you up forever._

That was a weak point. It had been painful enough to endure childhood as the strange one, the friendless one, the quiet foreigner with the weird habits; now, the influence and actions of his dark possessor had worsened that reputation. Even those who would call themselves his friends were not immune to what they saw, and Ryou was all too aware of the wary looks Jounouchi snuck towards him when things seemed out of place. He had never fully understood the nature of the spirit, or of the duality between said spirit and Ryou, a fact they were all guilty of to some degree. It seemed impossible, then, for the soft-spoken boy to ever acquire the sort of innocent and simple friendship he ached for, and the spirit knew this well. It made a fine weapon with which to jab at his psyche, when he felt particularly spiteful. Even now the suggestion made Ryou wince, trying silently to block out the sibilant voice. No success.

_It would only take a little shove,_ the spirit noted with audible approval, and finally Ryou's retreat into himself became visible to those without. Yugi, who had noticed his pained silence contrasting the easy-going laughter of the others, was the one to voice his concern.

"Bakura-kun? Is something wrong?" His own puzzle-bound spirit sighed, knowing the pallid boy's expression all too well, but left the response to Ryou nonetheless. It was to his surprise that the usual polite dismissal and artificial smile did not appear then; instead Ryou seemed to be struggling just to speak, and when he finally did it was softly and with stammering haste.

"I---I've forgotten something at home---I'll see you all at school later." And before he could be questioned, he had turned and was running from the little crowd, head down and eyes squeezed shut.

Once he'd turned from their line of sight, darting into a snowbanked alley, he let himself collapse to his knees and silently trembled. For a terrifying moment, he had believed – just as the now-chuckling spirit had intended – that his control would flee and Yugi would indeed fall victim to the homicidal intentions housed within him. That spirit – _Bakura-sama_, as he had commanded Ryou to call him if he had to address him by anything – had found a new weakness as of late, in the threatening of his host's dearest and most sincere friend. And it was an effective one, which could only mean it would continue to be exploited. This realization was made bitterly, before that bitterness melted into the same restrained swirl of pain that Ryou had learned to make himself numb to and the boy pushed himself to stand, calmly brushing the snow from his legs and hurrying to make it to school in time.

He made it through the first three classes of the day before his continuing inability to keep his eyes open could no longer be excused with an apology and the teacher, quietly noting the arrival of a new visible injury or two, shooed him off to the nurse's office. The pale boy was becoming a common sight around there; at one point, there had been talk of the school taking action to determine whether he was abused at home, but the idea had been resigned to unofficial gossip when it was revealed that he lived alone and was never in any kind of relationship. Now the school nurse, a pleasant maternal sort, welcomed him in with a knowingly sympathetic smile and escorted him to the room's little cot. They didn't really go through the motions any more; she would ask what was wrong, he would have a polite and plausible explanation for everything, and all she could do was offer him a chance to lay down and rest a while – he would decline – before sending him back to class.

"Such a nice boy, too," she murmured wistfully to an onlooking assistant as Ryou made his way back towards his classroom. "I can't see why anyone would put those kind of marks on him."

After that it was business as usual. To help himself stay awake, Ryou dutifully noted every word his teachers inscribed on the chalkboards, copying it all in his neat script into a well-kept composition book. During these hours, for the most part, Bakura would grow bored with his host's world and retreat into his inner sanctuary, a darkly private place that housed much of his grandiose and violent scheming. School had become Ryou's haven, the closest to a relief from the torment that he could ever find, but as of late even that was losing its potency. The comfort and happiness of being there had dimmed to the same dull acceptance that seemed to be consuming every moment of his life; to be protected from pain was also to be protected from joy, or anger, or any other feeling stronger than this numb iciness to which he'd given himself over.

Bakura did make an unexpected appearance midday, when lunchtime rolled around. Everyone ate inside in this weather; Yugi and company tended to clump their desks together, while Ryou stayed alone at his. At some point in the haze of the morning routine, he'd fashioned a simple lunch for himself; the sandwich which was its main component stuck out amidst the bento-boxed entrees of his classmates, but it reminded him of younger days and posed more appeal to his tastes. He'd just begun to unfold the neat cling-wrap in which he'd bound the meal when suddenly his hands no longer worked, and the dark spirit's presence had stalked out of its hiding place. The surprise he couldn't help but show only seemed to amuse Bakura, who now replaced the food in the paper sack Ryou'd brought it in and – and now Ryou's legs too went numb – walked calmly to the garbage, disposing of the uneaten meal without a word. The same easy steps carried him back to his seat, and then control belonged once more to the body's original owner, who could only stare dumbstruck at the empty desk where his lunch had just been. It had been a random act of cruelty, and when the conspicuous growling of Ryou's stomach during the next class made the boy flush and shrink into his seat with embarrassment, Bakura's grin haunted his mind.

But he was more or less silent then, and remained so till the day's end. And this pain, while fading with all the others, still managed to hit Ryou – he did not want to go home. At home, the spirit was unrestrained. Sometimes he would knock out his host's consciousness for a while and go do who-knew-what, leaving Ryou bewildered and unremembering when he came to again. Sometimes he'd take the temporary body he'd taught himself to form and cause trouble with that. Most often, though, he simply broke from the confines of the ring and existed around the house, as casually as if he himself owned it, entertaining himself with the wonders of modern technology (he had an inexplicable fondness for the tv that, when Ryou had been alone there, had done little but gather dust) or with the torment of his hapless vessel. He did not need to eat, but he would demand that dinner be made for him anyways, and when it inevitably fell short of his desires, Ryou paid dearly for his errors.

The spirit was not introspective by nature. He gave little thought to why he did all this, why he found the need to constantly lash out at what he considered a weak burden he'd been temporarily cursed with. It was just the way things were. There was a time when he had known, in fleeting moments, exactly why he did it. When Ryou had first come into his possession, as it were, and had still cried out when he was hit. There had been something narcotically beautiful in the boy's screams. Now, they were no more. He was nearly silent, no matter what was done to him, a fact that only frustrated Bakura and induced the assaults to intensify. But he had never really needed to know why things were this way. They simply were.

After what had happened that morning, Ryou knew better than to accompany his friends home, as much as he ached for their company. They were not close, and for all the kindness that had been extended, Ryou had remained the eternal outsider. But they were real. They were human, something he wasn't sure he could say about himself any more, and he longed for that. He forced himself, however, to fight that longing, slipping off to take an alternate route home. Yugi had been in genuine danger that morning and hadn't even known it; he would not take that risk with his friend again. And so it was just him and Bakura, who seemed a little irked at having been deprived of that particular pleasure. The spirit was in an ill mood…that did not bode well at all for the rest of Ryou's day, a fact he grimly accepted as he trudged his way through the snow.

By the time he let himself into the empty house, warmer than the ice outside but no more welcoming, he could feel the spirit straining to escape. And as soon as the door was closed, before Ryou could even hang his scarf on the coat rack, he had done so and stood, abruptly, behind the boy. Without warning, he grabbed one of the thin shoulders before him, whirling Ryou about so they faced and grinning in a show of near-deranged bad intentions.

He was met with nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

The lovely brown eyes that had once shimmered and dilated with fear at such a look were utterly dimmed, as blank as those of the porcelain dolls Ryou sometimes resembled, and the grin faded to a glare of angry frustration. He had savored that fear, that raw terror; now his light had gone numb on him, and even when he shoved the boy irritably back into the wall, he received only a moment's flinch in response. No cry, no surprise or pain. Nothing. It had been this way, and growing in severity, for some weeks now, and Bakura did not know what to make of it. There was no doubt that this was his doing, that it was his treatment that had driven every spark of light or emotion from his host – but the smug satisfaction this should have induced failed to appear. In its place was a furious confusion, and again he pushed the boy, trying to coax forth some pained sound or expression. None came forth.

It did not seem so long ago that this was not the case. Just beside where Ryou's head met the entryway wall, the plaster buckled and cracked and gave way to an apple-sized hole that bared insulation and piping. Evidence of a recent bout of madness on the dark spirit's part; he had taken a swing at Ryou just where they were now, but the boy – for he still reacted then – had instinctively ducked aside, and the wall had taken his wrath instead. All reasonable enough. The memory that had stuck, and the one to which Bakura's mind was now recalled as he stared at the spot, was that of what had immediately followed the impact.

_Seething, he drew his fist back for another strike, resolving that this one would not be evaded, but before he could fully retract his hand it had been taken, wrapped up in the somehow more delicate one of his light. The fearful countenance he had been inducing had faded with startling speed, leaving behind a look of gentle worry for which Bakura had been wholly unprepared. Too stunned to withdraw, he stared on as the boy he'd claimed examined that fist, frowning in his harmless way._

_"Oh, but you're bleeding now…Wait here, please." It was too surreal to react to, and the spirit could only stand in bewildered wait, casting a glance towards the slow drip of blood that seeped from his knuckles. By the time he understood what had just happened, Ryou had skittered back, wielding a damp washcloth in one hand and a roll of gauze bandaging in the other. And then he had taken Bakura's hand again, and the spirit went to recoil only to find the gentle brown eyes frowning up at him and the washcloth being dabbed lightly against the plaster-induced scratches._

_"Please. Hold still." It was as though Ryou had no idea that the punch had ever been intended for him, an impossible notion Bakura discarded immediately. Without that being the case, though, there was no explanation for his tender behaviour now, for his deft workings to clean the injuries and wrap them neatly up. When it was at last finished, the spirit still frozen by his disbelief, Ryou smiled and drew back, retreating away to whatever it was he'd been at work on before the fight began._

_Bakura, dumbfounded, had not come after him again for the rest of the day._

Now there was not even that. Not even the surreal, inexplicable compassion that had once shone through his light's numb exterior, and for however unexpected it had been Bakura still found himself somehow missing it. He had died millennia ago, and yet at this moment he seemed more real than the silent, blank-eyed form slouching against the wall before him. That revelation sent a piercing heat through him, a fierce animalistic mix of anger and despair, and he gripped the boy's shoulders too tightly and shoved him back once more, nearly denting the plaster again in his ferocity.

"You aren't even _alive_ any more!"

The words had been shouted, and it first it seemed to be the volume that Ryou reacted to. But that alone could not explain the slow disintegration of the dull apathy, or the look of sheer pain by which it was replaced. For a long frozen moment it seemed as though the old tears Bakura had once provoked with ease were going to spill over once more, streaming down those pallid cheeks the way they had when the boy still seemed to feel…

But they didn't.

He merely stood there, empty and broken and silent. At last the spirit could no longer bear the sight, nor the electrifying ache it shot through him, and with a slam of the door he was gone, fleeing through the snow that had just begun to fall once more. The boy inside, who now crumbled shakily to his knees, was something he could not bear to face now; his only destination was as far from Ryou as he could run, and his only plans beyond that were the vague ideas that he'd go back before night fell and the cold became too harsh on this temporary body.

_"You aren't even alive any more!"_

Bakura was absent from his mind now, but his words lingered, echoing and looping incessantly. _Well,_ murmured his own thoughts in response, _that's it, then._ Quietly, mechanically, he eased off his boots and gloves, placing everything where it belonged; his coat found residence on its designated hook.

He paused then, and stepped closer to one of the small frost-painted windows that flanked the front door. Beyond it the world was beautiful and white and unfeeling, and for a long moment he silently gazed upon it.

And then, just as silently, he turned and made his way up the stairs, slipping into the bathroom there and locking the door.

(A/N: Yes, it's longer than the prologue. So, what do you think so far? Working?)


	3. Chapter 2

Penumbra Darkening

Cautions: Angst. Lots. Some blood and such in this chapter.

Inescapable disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 2

Running usually required a destination. Running _away_ was another matter entirely. Bakura's desperate, slush-hindered sprint through the back alleys of the city was unquestionably the latter, for where was there to go? The ring to which he was inextricably bound still laid, as far as he knew, about Ryou's neck – and like a leash it would not allow this false body to stray too far. There was no goal to this dash anyway, save for that of distancing himself from the delicate young creature who, it seemed, had already floated miles beyond his reach.

_"You aren't even alive any more!"_ he had screamed, and he had meant it. The boy he had been shaking, the mess of pale and silent, had possessed all the spirit and vitality of a ragdoll, and somehow that rattled him to his core. It was his doing, of course, and he knew this well. It had even been his intent. He had bruised and wounded him into submission, believing firmly that once Ryou's spirit was too invalid to fight back, he would be infinitely easier to deal with. There would be no power struggles, no brief insurgencies to take back control, and Bakura would have everything he wanted.

And now this had become true, hadn't it? Where once there had been a spark that sometimes turned rebellious, there was now a lackluster compliance with everything the spirit threw at him. Where there had lingered a gentle sort of innocence that served only to annoy one whose own had been lost centuries ago, there was now this blankly uncaring _thing_ that he had become. He had, slowly and methodically, killed his host's spirit. The terrible part was how this now settled in his thoughts as he wandered, bewildered, through the white-blanketed town. There was no satisfaction where he had expected it, no sense of pride or relief at having attained this long goal. He could not even bring himself to say he was pleased with his own work, and this was a rarity in itself for the proud thief. Instead he was angry, mind lashing out again and again at the numb being in his thoughts, and he had no idea why. Somehow, inexplicably, he had _wanted_ Ryou to fight back then. Or to cry out. Something, anything – anything but what he had done, which was quite simply nothing. He had wanted that spark of reality that set the two of them apart, that named Ryou as true and living and human, and yet he had been the one to extinguish it. It was not in his own nature to fall prey to such thoughts and insecurities, but now they haunted him, and when he could run no more he sank against the bricks of an alley wall, breathless and red-faced from the cold that stung at his eyes and cheeks. His legs, for reasons entirely unrelated to the shortcomings of this form, wobbled threateningly till he finally slid to sit amidst the snow and scattered litter, head bowed against the flakes that still dropped around him. Attempting to clear his thoughts seemed a futile gesture, but he tried anyways, eyes squeezed shut in a victimless glare of concentration.

A few moments passed this way before abruptly, and inescapably, something was very wrong. It began as a sharp sting just past the edge of his left sleeve, then spread to a mirrored one on the right, and with each passing second it worsened. Bewildered, the spirit lifted his arms and jerked the shirt aside, staring at the points from which the pain was now beginning to radiate. There was nothing there to explain its sudden onset – no wounds, no suggestion of injury, nothing but a faint reddish tint that owed its presence to the bite of the wintry air. But the pain seemed unwilling to wait for an explanation to be found, and heedlessly intensified, Bakura gritting his teeth against it and instinctively tucking the sore regions against himself to try to block the ache out. This proved to be another fruitless endeavor…and then it was deepening further still, a swirling dizziness clawing at the corners of his mind. With a growl he clutched at his head, hands curling to fists in his hair, but it only grew more staggering and he was vaguely aware that had he not already been seated, this would have likely knocked him off his feet.

Whatever the cause of this unseen assault, it grew only more agonizing with each passing moment, and the longer he sat there the more it seemed some invisible wound was bleeding him dry, stealing away all the strength he possessed. Finally, mind scrabbling for a solution, he determined that whatever it was might stop if he abandoned this body and returned to the sanctity of his Ring. To do so, he'd need to be nearer it than he was now, and so he struggled to his feet – Ra, where had his energy gone? – and began the hurried, unsteady trek home, stumbling and wobbling and very nearly losing his balance a few times. Things were growing darker somehow, and the world about him blurring, spurring him only to get home faster.

He couldn't have been more than a block or two away from his destination when the latest and most crippling wave of the assault hit. It was pain, but it was a new sort all together. The only word he could conjure up for this was sorrow, heart-gripping sorrow, but it seemed a terribly inadequate name for the sensation that had just now sent him reeling. It was grief, it was anguish, it was despair…

…and it was _not_ his own. There were emotions of which he was capable and emotions of which he was not, and these were far beyond his own realm of feeling. This staggering torment did not have its foundry in his own heart; such a powerful and profound pain could only be born of a more sensitive soul than his own, and immediately there was no doubt as to whose soul was in question here.

Something was very, very wrong with Ryou.

And whatever the something was, it was becoming insistently worse, to the point that the spirit to whom he was bound could scarcely make three or four steps at a time before his legs would wobble and come dangerously near to giving out, the white of the world about him turning a sickly gray as his sight grew clouded. His arms had nearly numbed from the pain – so much could not be said for his chest, which ached with an unfamiliar constriction that came and ebbed in the same tidelike waves that brought with them the weight of his host's suffering. A small flock of schoolgirls, chatting as they strolled along the snowy sidewalk, was knocked roughly apart by the stumbling form; such casualties would have numbered higher, but mercifully the weather had kept most indoors today.

With each step as crippled and hindered as though by the sinking sands of his childhood memories, it seemed an impossibly long time before he'd made it at last to the little unshoveled walk that snaked up to the front door, and to that door itself, shoving it open and all but falling in. The pain had grown only sharper as he'd neared; now, no more than a moment's distance from his aching host, even breathing was a fierce challenge. The desperate agony that had drawn him here continued to pull now, stronger than ever; its wrenching pull led him up the stairs, where the dim stretch of hallway was pierced by a strip of light that marked the bottom edge of the closed bathroom door. _In there?_ He wondered groggily, and the pull of his Ring answered in the affirmative.

And so forward he forced himself, staggering to the door and going to shove it open – only to find the lock firmly in place. Bewildered, he gave another firm push, but to no avail. To try again, he realized grimly, would cost him his last traces of stability. He would require his thief's intellect, a difficult thing to summon up in this state, and when he'd caught his breath he leaned to expertly detach the hinge pins that kept the door in place. Hn…The doors he remembered had not bothered with such things, but old habits died hard and he had inevitably become acquainted with the methods of trickery needed to take what he liked in this modern world as well. A bit of careful jimmying had it, and he knocked the door aside, shoving roughly in.

He was not prepared for what he saw.

The bath had been drawn, and drawn deep. Its waters brimmed over the edge, seeping to stain the once-immaculate tile and grout beneath.

Staining them pink.

Poisoning the bath's contents were dense clouds of red, clouds which clotted the surface and obscured the thin, bruised frame of its lonely inhabitant. He did not move, did not stir or shift when Bakura yelled his name; shaking his shoulders earned no response, nor any change in the tearstained pain frozen into his expression. Even a few desperate slaps proved to be in vain, and with each passing moment, the same unconsciousness that had descended upon him seemed closer to claiming the spirit crouched beside the tub as well. Frantically, and still yelling for the boy to wake up, Bakura fished through the tainted waters till his hands closed around one thin forearm, yanking it above the surface. For just a moment it was clean, rinsed by the sudden motions, and then just as suddenly it had stained itself once more, crimson pouring from the fearsome gashes that scored the boy's delicate wrists. All of it seemed hazy, dreamlike, impossible; even as he dropped that arm with a yelled curse in some long-dead dialect, the spirit could not really make himself believe that what he saw before him truly existed.

Reality, however, had no more regard for whether it was accepted than the night had for whether it brought sleep, and consciousness continued to slip heedlessly away from Bakura with each passing instant. A dizzied glance to the counter behind him illuminated the ring to which he was bound, limp and lackluster atop the yet-spotless porcelain around the sink, but he no longer sought to retreat into the sanctity of its chambers. To escape the pain would be a futile errand; he had seen lives taken with wounds like the ones Ryou now bore, and while he recovered within, his host would die. The drive at this moment to prevent that, at any costs, went unquestioned; it came to him as instinct. A difficult instinct to act upon, however, with his mind swimming and his legs barely complying when he willed them to straighten and replace him on his feet. He swore now to every god in his copious pantheon, cursing the way the blood continued to spill from Ryou like light pouring from a window. A beautiful, shattered window…

And one he did not know how to repair. Snatches of ideas, of solutions, flitted wantonly through his mind, but only one seemed willing to hold still long enough for him to grasp it. A memory, of a conversation…Ryou, demonstrating the mechanism of a bandaid, and going on in his topic-hopping way to comment on how much better medical services were in this era than they must have been when the thief was alive. How well organized and accessible they were, a fact that had thoroughly surprised the spirit at the time. To get in touch with these allegedly advanced services – well, undoubtedly one of his little companions would know that, since trying to ask Ryou himself anything right now would be painfully futile.

A few staggering steps, broken by intermittent collapses against the neat hallway walls, brought the half-conscious spirit to Ryou's room, and a shove of the door – this one proved to be unlocked – granted him access. The place was irritatingly neat, devoid of the worn clothes or aging magazines that might have marred the bedroom of a less fastidious type, and it was all too easy – even with the rapid dimming and swaying of his sight - to pick out the plastic silhouette of the phone upon his desk. Beside it, predictably in its place, was the small spiral-bound book in which he'd seen his vessel inscribing the little notes that were his attempt at hanging onto friendships – names, addresses, numbers for their phones, both the normal ones and the inscrutable little beeping ones they all seemed to carry around wherever they went. That was what he'd sought, and he called on what he'd picked up of this place's script to make an educated guess at which of those numbers he could dial into the phone to talk to the pharaoh's light. He was the most annoyingly dependable one of the bunch, and by Bakura's reasoning, the one most likely to know how to get in touch with this supposedly accesible modern medicine Ryou'd spoken of. Hands fumbling and shaking, he keyed the digits from the book into the phone's handset, holding it to his head as he'd seen others do and struggling to stay on his feet through the agonizingly long moments in which all that crackled through the receiver was the electronic buzz of ringing. One…another…a third, and now he could stand no more and crumbled to the ground, the phone's base tumbling along to crash at his side…

And then, mercifully, a voice.

"Hello?"

His voice…it wouldn't work right, and his eyelids were slipping, gaze reduced to hazy slits.

"Hello?"

A last, desperate struggle against the oncoming darkness. If he could not speak now, Ryou was gone.

"…Yugi…"

Silence, perhaps startled, and at last hesitant recognition.

"Bakura-kun? Is that you? I can hardly hear you…"

"Ryou."

"Eh?"

"He's in trouble…hospital, you've got to get…"

And finally the dark eyes closed, head falling forward and limp fingers surrendering the phone to gravity, even as Yugi's voice, confused and startled, buzzed from its speaker.

"What? What do you---is this---What happened? Hello? Bakura-kun!" Distantly the spirit could hear a thud – the phone being dropped? – and unclear words in a desperate tone, the pharaoh's voice now mingling with that of his bewildered lighter half, and then at last an all-encompassing silence banished him from it all.


	4. Chapter 3

Penumbra Darkening

Cautions: Angst. Lots. Fondness from unexpected sources.

Inescapable disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 3

Time, even in small passages, brings about remarkable transformations. It brings about not-so-remarkable ones as well, and among these was undoubtedly the change in state that had taken place over some hours in this, the intensive care ward of Domino's primary hospital. It had began in chaos, in the frenzy so familiar to that place, with the arrival of one unconscious boy and a small, very worried cluster of his friends. That excitement had slowly given way to a simmering tension, and the sick anxiety of waiting while the deep, neatly made gashes that had sent him here were patched and the lost blood replaced. As a souvenir of that time, and of the long fearful observation that had followed, prints of hands and nosetips still remained where they'd been pressed to the glass of the room's single window. And there were quite a few of those – a fact which had proved unnervingly strange to the well-weathered staff who'd seen this particular patient in. One look at the injuries gave a clear measure not only of their gravity and nature, but of their cause…what, then, of the group who'd brought him in? Their concern and pain at the state of their companion had marked them as his friends, and the simple grim truth was that rarely did those who ended up here with injuries like his have such support.

Still, as incongruent as it all seemed, the little flock had unquestionably counted him as close, for they had lingered outside the room for hours, disregarding the reminders (given at regular intervals) that there was little they could do for now, and that their friend would not likely wake up till the next day. The smallest of the gaggle, a bright-eyed boy who seemed to have come with his older brother – the resemblance had turned a few heads – had been the last to go, stubbornly remaining in one of the stiff wooden chairs outside the observation window till finally all visitors to the hospital had been sent home for the day.

And now the spectrum had been run fully, from the rushing madness that began the episode to the lonely silence that had descended now, cold as the now-halfhearted snowfall outside and broken only by the whirrs and pinging monotones of modern medicine at its finest. The last scheduled check-in of the day had been hours ago; it was merely a formality in such a case as this, and there had been little for the orderly to do but check the monitors and make note, for the records, of what they reported. That was all that was required; however, she, like the one whose turn it had last been to look in on this one, could not help but pause and gaze at the strange object that had been the cause of some controversy earlier.

_"You can't leave that thing in there with him! That spirit---he's crazy, right? I mean, who knows what he'll do!" It was a surprisingly good point, coming from Jounouchi – who, while he couldn't be faulted on his good intentions, was not known for thinking things through. The truth to the words had not missed Yugi, who at them had frowned in his own well-meaning confusion at the item he'd unthinkingly taken with him as the paramedics brought Ryou down to the ambulance waiting outside._

_ "The spirit is probably even weaker than he is, right now." That had been the former pharaoh, tone resolute and a reassuring hand placing itself on Yugi's shoulder. "The Ring has powers of its own, and as long as it recognizes Bakura-kun as its owner, those powers will naturally serve him. He will almost definitely heal faster with the Ring near." Now Yugi blinked, memory drawing forth confirmation of the theory, and nodded quickly._

_ "That's right! Ever since I've had the puzzle, whenever I get sick, I get better a lot faster than I used to before!" With the focus of the conversation coming to powers that Jounouchi had never professed to understand, he had backed off, and in the end the Ring had been left on Ryou's little bedside table with instructions that it, being a precious possession to the wounded boy, not be moved from there by anyone._

So there it laid still, provoking some curiosity amongst those who'd treated him – it looked like some kind of relic, hardly a common thing for a boy to hold as precious as his friends had implied, and both its origins and purpose were an utter mystery. Still, there were more important things in the hospital than one patient's odd-looking belonging, and by the next day it would fade from the idle conversations it had briefly held a place in.

This likely would have been quite different if there had been witnesses to what transpired in the little room just past midnight, but by then its inhabitant had been deemed stable and the checkups ceased to avoid disturbing his much-needed sleep. And so there was no one to see the golden ring glimmer where it sat, shining in the dimmed light of the room – and no one to see the much more remarkable phenomenon which followed. Suddenly, and with no explanation, the population of that room had doubled, and beside the bed stood a lanky, unsteady figure who could have passed as the sleeper's twin. He had not known for certain, upon his emergence, that they would not be disturbed; he had not cared, either. Such concerns were far from his mind now, which still ached and wavered as it had before he'd blacked out. Now, at last, he was conscious once more…and once again, the sight before him was painful in ways he didn't know how to name.

There was Ryou, more delicate and fragile in his appearance than Bakura would have imagined possible. He'd been dressed in some pale patterned gown of standard hospital fashion, and the impossibly white bedsheets were pulled up to his chest. The bed was a suitable size for an adult; in it, Ryou seemed small, wispy, scarcely there at all. The overbearing impression that the slightest touch might just shatter the boy was only furthered by the array of tubes and wires that ensnared him – one there in his arm, another running along his finger, the pair stemming from beneath the gown – and fed into the containers and the screens arrayed at the other side of the bed. Those earned Bakura's silent gaze only briefly before it was returned to the unconscious figure before him, who even in his sleep was holding onto a staggeringly pained expression. The whole picture left the spirit with a dull, choking ache that gripped his chest and would not let go, even as he reached back and found one of the twin chairs within the room, pulling it to bedside and collapsing into it. The bed was low; seated, he still looked down on his sleeping host, who showed no signs of recognition or awareness.

He was alive, though, and in the stunned aftermath of all that had happened, Bakura could not spare the energy to deny what a relief that was. Ryou had not died, and he was glad, and there was no point in telling himself otherwise. A long time would be passed that way, sitting silently beside the bed, before he brought himself to confront the part of this fact that did earn thought: namely, why?

It was senseless. Ryou had always been far too weak for his tastes. Intolerably. Too weak, and too unruly. From the beginning, as soon as he was aware of the spirit's presence, he rebelled. That was an annoyance, and it was doubled by the weakness of the fight he put up. Had the boy truly resisted, it would have been harder for Bakura to hold onto control, but at least he would have been able to possess some respect for his host. But that had never been the case; even when he seemed firmly opposed to the spirit or his intentions, he always submitted in the end. And when that opposition was weak, or nonexistent? He was a puppet. A willing puppet. He cooperated more with Bakura than those around him had ever realized, and somehow that was the worst part of all.

Because, Bakura acknowledged now, Ryou was too good of a puppet, when he could have been so much more. Had he fought back, had he stood up for himself, he could have been strong. He had the intellect, and whether he realized it or not he had a great deal of cunning too. But he was always too willing to submit, and had remained perpetually weak as a result. It was a painfully frustrating thing to witness.

And he was kind. Ra, he was kind. Cripplingly so. This, the spirit mused, was another thing about Ryou that he had always hated, that had kept him from developing the sort of strength of which he could otherwise have been capable. He seemed to lack what to Bakura was a fundamental instinct: the desire to hurt one's enemy. Bakura was crueler than Ryou than he really needed to be, and he knew it. There were wounds that had probably scarred for life, inflicted in anger or frustration or simple, aimless violence. And yet, never once had Ryou hit back. As time had gone on, he stopped even defending himself, and merely took the blows he was dealt. Tending to the injuries they left behind was something done quietly and efficiently, after the spirit's wrath had passed.

It went beyond the refusal to return any of that abuse. Far beyond. Bad enough that the boy seemed bewildered by even the notion of fighting back; he _aided_ Bakura. He _helped_ him. As though he was a dear friend, and not a source of constant torment and aggression. This was largely a matter of little things – of focusing on the spirit's needs before his own, even when no demands were made; of treating him to inexplicable bits of kindness, like the time Bakura had stormed from the house in a particularly bad mood and returned home to find Ryou setting a beautiful dinner on the table. Not for himself, but for the spirit. To…'help him feel better', he'd said. Stupid. Stupid things like that. Perhaps the worst thing about all of it was just how little sense it all made. Bakura did not enjoy confusion any more than anyone else did, after all.

And so he lashed out. In his confusion, in his rage and frustration and annoyance, he tortured his unceasingly gentle host. In the tragic irony of making wishes only to find the results less pleasing than expected, he had made some progress. The sweet innocence had faded, and the tenderness dimmed. Just as Bakura had wanted from the start, for it was impossible to deal with such unfamiliar things. The fiendish twist, however, was that they were not replaced with ferocity, strength, or any sense of self-preservation. They were not replaced at all, and Ryou had become the empty shell from whom Bakura had run from the day before.

Maybe, he wondered, eyes still trained unwaveringly on his host's limp form, it was the emptiness that had brought this to pass. If so, Ryou could hardly be blamed. To live as such a thing – Bakura could not imagine it, and supposed that were he ever reduced to one, he would likely follow the same course his gentle light had. Whether this was born of emptiness or pain scarcely mattered in the end, though; one way or another, it was Bakura's doing, and he knew it. It had been his words, his treatment, that had made life so unappealing that Ryou had chosen to discard it. All this he understood, and yet he had not been prepared for the overwhelming remorse and guilt that were now setting in.

There was no reason for those, after all, or so argued his rational mind. Ryou was just another vessel. Dispensable, a fact he had pointed out to the boy before. And Bakura had been able to justify all the cruelty and sadism with the simple belief that he hated his host.

But if that was all true, this should be painless. An inconvenience at worst.

It wasn't.

Instead it left the spirit bitterly pained, and even more bitterly confused. And every time his eyes fell on the wounded figure beside him, the ache pierced deeper.

The storm of thoughts that haunted him now could have consumed the rest of the night, but before they could progress further they were interrupted by the faintest stirrings of life, announcing some still-infant recovery in the form of a few soft, discontented murmurs and little movements that barely rustled the sheets. Trace as the signs were, they sufficed to break Bakura's already-derailed train of thought, attention diverting from those troubling questions to the present moment. There was silence then, and he wondered briefly whether he'd imagined those stirrings – only to be reassured to the contrary when at last Ryou moved again, wincing and turning restlessly. All the while, the spirit did not breathe, staring on with a wordless anxiety that was, like so much of this experience, starkly new to him.

At last, slowly, Ryou opened his eyes. Once, twice he blinked, weary gaze slowly focusing on the ceiling and its dimmed fluorescent lights. That was all there was for another moment, and then his eyes began to wander. To his wrists, which he lifted from his sides to examine, uncovering the ugly realities of stitches and butterfly clips. To the IV tube in his arm, and the packet it stemmed from. To the monitors that tracked his existence, counting out breaths or beats of the heart…and finally to Bakura, who all that while hadn't dared to move.

There, he stared for a long, long time, the pair of them identical in their unblinking silence.

Then, in a manner both sudden and gentle, Ryou began to weep.

The sounds were too faint, too soft to draw the attention of any wandering technicians; they were reserved, in nature's cruelest justice, for Bakura alone. And they paralyzed him; he could summon up no response, no words or gestures to soothe the gently crying boy. Nor, unexpectedly, could he find it in him to tell Ryou to shut up, as was more befitting his nature. He was helpless, and did the only thing he could manage: he sat, in silence, till at last the sobs had dissipated to ragged sniffles from which Ryou was slowly breaking free. At last he had quieted once more, and the machines to his side resumed their role as the room's sole source of noise.

Time, as it always did, passed. Silence reigned. Bakura couldn't have named how long it was before at last Ryou spoke, voice thin and hoarse.

"I'm sorry."

The part of Bakura's self that had remained intact throughout this acknowledged that, and noted that he had plenty to apologize for. The trouble he'd caused the spirit; the strain on his strength, physical and emotional; the work he'd been subjected to, of summoning up his host's friend so he could be brought here and treated. All of this registered in his mind, but none of it made its way into speech, which still remained frozen for him.

His possessor's continued silence gave Ryou cause for worry, for his own sake as well as for Bakura's; the spirit was upset, a fact which traditionally brought suffering upon both of them. Anticipating a strike, or some other assault, he fell quiet and still once more and averted his eyes to the far wall. He had lived. The cuts had been neat, exact, deep…and he had lived. Nothing would ever change, and that realization was nearly enough to break him down anew. He held it at bay, though, unwilling to give in to tears again so soon – especially now, when he'd need his awareness about him to handle whatever attack he received.

But he waited now, and the wait stretched on for agonizingly long minutes, uninterrupted by the blow he'd prepared himself for. Uninterrupted, too, by any sound from Bakura. Finally, the suspense was unbearable, and Ryou's concern for the spirit won out over that for himself. Tentatively he fumbled for the lever that angled the bed, drawing it into an upright position so he could better see the shadow-obscured eyes of his dark companion.

"Bakura?"

Nothing.

"Bakura…are…are you all right?"

The question had been strange, at odds with what seemed natural for the two; the answer was doubly so, when it came. Not in words, nor in the attack Ryou'd been bracing himself for, but in a sharp bowing of the spirit's head, shoulders hunched and and tensing in a few short jerks. Ryou, bewildered, struggled to lean nearer that he might understand what was going on.

To understand this was something Bakura would have liked as well, but he had no such luck. Heedless of his desperate confusion, and insistent orders that his body stop this nonsense, his attempts to speak produced only pained, hitching gasps. He knew what this was, or what it would be called as soon as tears entered the picture. That knowledge made it no easier to accept that he – he! – was now very nearly crying, and had no idea why or how to make it stop.

And there was Ryou, gentle Ryou, calling up the strength to lift one bandaged hand and set it softly upon the spirit's shoulder. As though _he_ were the wounded one, as though _he_ was the one in need of comfort and care…He tried to jerk free of the touch, for it only made the constriction in his throat grow tighter, but could not bring himself to break the tentative contact that had formed there. He was speaking now, murmuring in his soft lilt of a voice; the words were unclear, but their tone was unreasonably kind. Telling him not to worry, perhaps, or apologizing again; eventually he quieted once more, just as Bakura's own voice was finding its footing at last. The words that came forth, though – he would look upon them later and wonder, mystified, where they had come from.

"You…you have…_no_ right to…" A cough, attempting to clear the imaginary obstruction, and in response a soothing little pet on that shoulder that nearly ended the sentence right there. He found speech again, though, and shaking, continued.

"You have no right…to leave…to leave me this way." He went to grab at one of the boy's wrists, to emphasize his point, but caught himself before he could do so and merely dropped his hand limply into the rumpled sheets. There Ryou stared a moment, utterly stunned, before his eyes flickered back to a countenance still hidden in shade and unruly cascades of white. He could not speak, but Bakura eventually could, voice trembling worse with each successive word.

"You…are _mine_, Ryou…and you can't…you can't _leave_ like that."

The words, which hung solidly in the air in the silence that followed, seemed to have exhausted Bakura. Still, he might have won out in this struggle against himself, if not for the recurring truth of just what sort of a person Ryou was. He watched Bakura shake and struggle with himself for only a few moments before gently squeezing the shoulder his hand laid on, and slowly lifting its counterpart to rest upon the spirit's other arm.

"Bakura."

The unexpected calm shortness of his light's tone made Bakura look up, only to be met with a disarmingly gentle gaze, exhausted but not too weary to radiate concern.

"I'm sorry."

Bakura shook.

"I shouldn't have done this…" He trailed off then, for he'd noticed the way the pale hand upon the bed had clenched into a quivering fist around a handful of the linens, and he laboriously dropped his own to rest soothingly atop it. The response was another hitched cough; Bakura seemed to be falling apart before his eyes, and so his own pain was for the moment put aside. And Bakura? He knew this was happening. He knew that he would probably never understand why, and moreover he knew that there was something heartbreaking about the kindness Ryou was sparing him. Not just annoying, or frustrating. Positively heartbreaking, a word he'd never sincerely applied to any pain before this one. Heedless of that sting, however, Ryou gave no sign of ceasing. Anything but, it seemed, for now his thumb stroked comfortingly over the back of Bakura's hand, as easily as if the spirit were his dearest friend. Even Ryou could not easily explain that part, but he didn't see any reason to try. This was what it was, inexplicable a thing as that could be, and so for now he just soothed his tormented companion as well as he could.

It was working, and too well. Bit by bit, Bakura was easing, and as he did, the defenses he'd instilled against his own weakness were crumbling. He could not even summon up the pride to be embarrassed with himself now, and at last everything simply gave way.

It happened faster than Ryou could see. Bakura was at his side, head down…and then that head was buried against the light's chest, strong arms fiercely wound about his waist. It was possession, plain and simple – just as he'd said. Ryou was _his_. Perhaps that was the most painful part of this whole ordeal: it was the loss of a possession that, taken for granted as it had been, was still somehow vital and treasured.

Bakura did not explain himself now, and Ryou didn't question him. He merely let himself be held, ignoring the near-painful desperation that made the grip so tight, and weakly wrapped his own arms around the trembling spirit in response.

"I'm sorry, Bakura."

Then, more hesitantly, "…I thought you wanted me to go."

"So did I."

That was all he said, and Ryou turned his back on the confusion that threatened to consume him, falling silent in turn and simply holding the spirit close.


End file.
